7 New Books You Need To Read In August

Whether fiction or nonfiction or short- or long-form, the best of late-summer books are all variations on the theme of contemporary life; academics and debut novelists and internet-era social critics alike are training their lenses on small slices of modern existence. Here, a selection of the month’s finest reading that’s as entertaining as it is intellectually urgent.

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'My Absolute Darling' by Gabriel Tallent

Every once in awhile there comes along a fictional character—Jane Eyre, Kunta Kinte, Jude St. Francis—whose plight and determination to overcome subsumes the reader so completely, we actually feel ourselves missing him or her after the final page. Turtle, the adolescent protagonist of Gabriel Tallent's debut novel, is that and so much more. For her unconventional wisdom and indomitable inner strength, and for Tallent's descriptive dexterity, which makes everything from Turtle's physical anguish to the smells and sensations of the lush California wilderness around her leap off the page—this is one of the most important books you'll pick up this decade.

The most insidious enemies we humans are ever made to confront are none other than those that attack us from within our own psyches. In her memoir of battling mental illness, Cree LeFavour uses the force of her blisteringly stark, mesmerizingly self-aware prose to not only unearth her own demons, but also equip the reader with the language to articulate our own as well.

The inaugural title published under Lenny, the imprint founded by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, collects seven witty and poignant stories for today's New York women. What the aggregate narratives ultimately reveal about both this category of people and the wider population, though, is that even more so than what we have in common, it is our singularity and diversity that defines us.

From Cat in the Hat to C.S. Lewis, Maurice Sendak to Goodnight Moon, books that have been classically canonized as “children’s literature” can in fact profoundly affect adult readers more than we think. In writing that blends personal reflection with authoritative literary analysis, Handy makes a powerful case for reading that picture book even after your child has fallen asleep.

The title character of Tom Perrotta’s latest novel seems at first just like any other suburban, divorced mother confronting an empty nest upon sending her only son off to college. However, as she looks deeper into the eye of her profound solitude, her search for greater engagement with the world leads her down a path of unexpected revelations, passions, and personal connections. The cast of hyper-realistic and fine-tuned characters together paint a portrait of modern life that accounts for the complications—and not just conveniences—afforded by advances from the digital to the sociocultural.

Two young, light-skinned, mixed-race Brooklynites embarking on their lives together encounter essential questions of identity—racial and otherwise—in Danzy Senna’s third novel. Set in the Rodney King-era ‘90s, New People is as mesmerizingly fast-paced as it is deeply reflective of monumental truths that resonate perhaps even more powerfully two decades in the future.

The unapologetically brazen and lovably frank author of Everything Was Fine Until Whatever breaks into the essay form while maintaining her signature prose style that seems natural and off-the-cuff but belies a labyrinth of subtlety and contemplation underneath. This collection of personal reminiscences—at turns shocking and yet surprisingly relatable—reveal as many seminal, universal truths about the complexities of coming of age in the digital era as they do the deep contemplations of a truly unique and gifted writer and young woman.

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